Bloody Solutions
by Heir of the void
Summary: When an (somewhat) ordinary boy from our world finds himself in a drop pod plummeting toward the Emerald Forest, events begin moving that threaten the safety of the world of Remanent.
1. Chapter 1

I woke up slowly, completely unaware I had been damned for all eternity. In hindsight, my first sign something was wrong was probably the shaking. My bed didn't usually do that, even if the alarm occasionally made it fell like that.

I tried to rub the grogginess from my eyes. Oddly, it seemed like my arms wouldn't move. I opened my eyes, but all I saw was a screen, which appeared to be about two inches from the tip of my nose. I tried to turn my head, but it wouldn't move either. It felt restrained

The words **Mission Briefing** appeared on the screen in bold red text. They hovered there for a moment, then faded.

"What's going on?" I muttered, trying instinctive to shake my head. "Where am I?"

**You have been selected for something special. At present, you are in a sub-orbital drop pod, manufactured by the Greater Chinese Coalition at the end of the First Interstellar War.**

"You mean I'm falling from space, in a pod_ made in China_?" I said, starting to become a bit delirious. "And what do you mean, First Interstellar War?"

**I had to make sure the pod wouldn't be missed. Anyway that's hardly relevant. Just forget it. You have been enrolled in Beacon Academy. **

"Wait, the one from that show? Ruby, err RWBY?" I was somewhat familiar with the show, but it had been a while since I'd watched it. "How? And _Why_?"

**You could not understand how, and you cannot know why. In any case, you have had your physical defects corrected, and brought to an adequate level of physical fitness. In addition, your Aura has been unlocked. Be glad; the Light of your Soul is strong. It may allow you to survive. **

"Great." I said, rolling my eyes. I certainly didn't feel different. "So where in the show are you putting me? The arrival at the academy? The robbery in episode one?"

**No, the initiation ceremony.**

Well, that figured.

**To increase your odds of survival, you will be issued up to two weapons, or one combined weapon. The supply interface will allow you to make a selection and customize it, to a certain extent**

"I don't suppose a Behemoth Tank is an option." I said.

A holographic display appeared in front of me, showing a wide variety of weapons. Enough to fight a small war, or so it would appear. It took me a few moments of fumbling to figure it out, but eventually I discovered that it responded to eye movement.

Now, for my combat experience. Not even remotely enough to be accepted to beacon, I was sure. I had a few years of martial arts experience, a few fencing lessons, and some pretty considerable experience with firearms. Given that, I figured I wanted to configure myself as a long-range fighter.

I looked at an assault rifle, then hesitated. Given some of the monsters that showed up in the show, I figured I wanted something with a bit more stopping power.

Then I saw it. It was a machine gun, which looked vaguely like the M249, or the SAW from HALO. That would work. It would have stopping power, all right, and shooting straight only mattered so much at 800 RPM. It was perfect.

Now I needed a melee weapon. I opened the menu for those. After a few seconds of searching, I came to the conclusion that I had a lot more options here.

Cool though sword were, my knowledge of them was limited to 'which end was pointy', so those were probably to be avoided.

There was no guarantee I would get a combat harness, and I had zero experience with switching weapons in a fight. I didn't want to drop my machine gun, so something that strapped to my arms would be nice.

The pod shook again, much more violently, and there was a loud _clunk_, like something was detaching from the pod. I had to hurry.

I opened the category of arm-mounted weapons. Most of them looked pretty complicated. I skimmed through the options, then picked the basic shot gauntlet frame and opened the customization menu.

I cut down the magazine to eight rounds per gauntlet to give myself some room, then started to move things around. It would have been kind of fun, had the knowledge that I was about to be dumped into a forest of monsters not been hanging over me like a sword.

Eventually, I decided that simple was best and went with a simple, short retractable blade. That would allow me to use my (pathetically limited) martial arts with minimum interference, while still giving me a lot more hitting power.

I confirmed my selections.

A countdown appeared on the screen. Numbers began ticking off from thirty. When they hit twenty, a grid appeared, with labeled dots of various colors on it. After a second, I recognized the labels as the names of the characters from the show. This would give me a pretty got shot of choosing my partner, if I was so inclined.

As the timer ticked down, I considered my course of action.

As the timer on the pod counted down from twenty, I decided I would try to land near Ruby. She seemed fairly compatible with me, personality wise, if I remembered correctly, plus a little plot armor never hurt anyone. I looked at her dot and blinked. It lit up and began flashing, and I felt a slight shift in the pod's descent.

The timer reached ten, and the shaking increased dramatically. As the timer hit eight, I briefly wondered how high above the Emerald Forest the pod would let me out. At six, the shaking became so bad I lost the train of thought.

Five.

Four.

Three. _I wonder where my weapons are coming from._

Two.

One. _How is this thing-?_

The pod literally fell apart around me. I felt a strange tingling sensation, followed by a weight on my shoulders and the sensation of something wrapping around my arms. I fell, screwing my eyes shut against the rushing air for a moment, before I realized it wasn't there. Hesitantly, I opened my eyes, and found they were protected by some sort of force field. I reached an arm up toward my head.

Or they were protected by a pair of goggles.

I gulped. This was likely to be the worst part. I took, with some difficulty, a deep breath, then looked down.

The Emerald Forest was tiny and far, far beneath me. I could see the cliffs the students had been launched from, the sprawling campus of Beacon Academy, and even the outskirts of Vale City.

I had never skydived before, but I knew enough of the basic theory that the slowest falling speeds would be attained by spreading out, which I did almost immediately.

I fell for a minute or so without incident. Once you got over the constant falling sensation and overwhelming mortal terror, this orbital drop thing wasn't so bad.

As I approached the ground, I vaguely heard a snapping noise over the constant sound of air rushing past me. Almost immediately, I started feeling something pulling me upwards I looked behind me, and saw a small parachute hanging in the air behind me. A drogue chute.

A moment later, the drogue chute began moving away from me, dragging my main parachute into position. It was a large, black rectangular affair, like the type that Special Forces use.

As I drifted downwards towards the treetops, a horrible thought struck me. _Wait a sec. How am I going to get out of these trees?_

I drifted downward, pulling on one of the lines holding me up to angle towards what looked like a gap between two trees. My legs fell below the height of the treetops, and soon I penetrated the forest canopy and came to a rest... about foot off the ground.

I hung there like a condemned man for a moment, catching my breath. I hadn't realized how hard I'd been breathing. Most likely, it was the thinness of the atmosphere up where the pod had opened.

As I hung, I heard a rustling in the brush somewhere in the distance. _That could be a monster, _I thought, frantically patting the backpack containing my parachute for the release cord, or switch, or whatever.

The rustling grew closer. In my attempt to find the parachute release mechanism, my fingers brushed across piece of cold metal. _My machine gun_! Frantically, I tore at the restraints around the weapon while the rustling sound grew closer.

Finally, I freed the weapon and got it off my back and into by hands. It looked just like it had in the weapon selection menu, with an interesting black-and-silver color scheme. I raised the butt stock to my shoulder, aimed the weapon at the ground, and fired a single shot.

There was a flash, a star-shaped burst just like with normal gunfire and a loud cracking noise. The rustling in the brush around me stopped. I switched my machine gun to my left hand, and began searching for the parachute release.

Then something sprang out of the underbrush at me. It came at be in a black streak, and I barely had time to register the details before it was on me. One thing I did make out were a set of long, viciously curve claws on each of the two forelegs extended outwards toward me.

Instinctively, I closed my eyes. Instead of waiting for it to claw out my face, I instead, still acting mostly on instinct, reached down into myself, into the depths of my being, while simultaneously envisioning a wall separating myself from everything else. I felt a power well up in me, and I fed it my confusion, frustration, and anger at being snatched from my home and sent... Here. I forced the power outwards.

The creature, the Grimm, reached my face. I opened my eyes. It struck a barrier, sending up a flare of light and, with a screeching cry, was sent flying.

I looked at the thing which lay sprawled on the ground before me. It looked vaguely like a squirrel, but several times larger, jet black, and with elongated forelimbs tipped by the cruel claws I had seen before. It raised its head towards me, baring wide, long-tipped fangs.

I raised my machine gun to my shoulder. In a blaze of light and barrage of sound, I reduced the creature to a bloody ruin.

After a good three or four seconds of firing, I stopped. Smoke rose from the tip of the barrel of my gun, and my ears rang from sound the gunfire. I panted, rocking in my harness, taking in one lungful after another of fresh, gunsmoke-laced forest air.

_Why am I so tired? _I thought. Well, as for starts it, could have been worse. I had killed my first Grimm, even if it was just a squirrel-thing. Still, why had the thing just bounced off-

_My Aura!_ That's why I was so tired after the fight. I had used my aura to block the attack of the killer squirrel, and it had exhausted my body's energy to do so. My ears perked up. I thought I heard a human voice in the distance, and drawing closer.

"Yang! Yang!" The voice said, becoming ineligible as it grew closer to me. It was Ruby. It sounded like her, and I remember her saying that in the show. I began frantically tearing at the straps for my parachute. I needed to-

THUD!

Something struck me with considerable force, knocking my machine gun out of my hands and sending me rocking back in my harness. I reached a zenith and came swinging back-

THUD!

I hit something again. I looked down, and saw Ruby Rose crumpled below my suspended feet.

_Well crap_.

"Uhhh," She woke up rolled onto her back, and looked up at me. "I'm so sorry. You're a Beacon Academy student, aren't you?"

"So, I guess this means we're partners, doesn't it."

"I'm afraid so."

"I'm sorry," I said again, for the umpteenth time. I had just dropped into his story- no, it to this world would be more accurate now, and into Ruby's live and changed it irrevocably. We were, for better or worse, partners. For the next four years, anyway.

"What do you have to be sorry about?" Ruby said. She would have no way to know what I had done. That is, if I had done anything wrong. She hadn't gotten along with Weiss, and that had almost gotten her killed. Maybe I had changed things for the better by appearing

"Nothing really, I suppose." I said.

"Well then, can I see your weapon again?" Ruby asked. She liked weapons. I remember that much from the show.

"Sure," I said. I passed her my machine gun. Given the trend of the weapons in this show, I probably needed to come up with a name for it, though nothing came to me right off the top of my head.

"Ohh, nice." Ruby said, examining the weapon, hefting it to get a feel for its weight, and so forth. "What does it do?"

"What does it do?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "It's a machine gun. It's designed to supply any Grimm monstrosity I encounter with its daily dose of dakka."

"Dakka? What's that?" Ruby asked.

"It's a term from where I come from. Its... slang for rapid-firing weapons, in short."

Ruby shook her head. "I've never heard it. By the way, where do you come from?"

"I-" I froze. I should have anticipated this question better, but with the attack of the killer squirrel and such, I had gotten understandably sidetracked. "I'm from a small village far away, in the middle of nowhere. I doubt you would have heard of it."

"I see." Ruby said, nodding, still carrying my gun. "Hey, if you have that machine gun, and it doesn't transform into anything, what do you do if a Grimm gets in close?"

"I have another weapon." I said, holding up my arms in what I think is a pretty good imitation of a fighting stance. I deployed my Sting Blades. "These."

"Wow, nice."

"Thanks. I know they aren't as hard to use as a scythe, though."

"No, I- you hear that?"

A twig snapped in the forest behind us, followed by a low growling sound. Slowly, I turned.

"Don't panic." I said, keeping my voice low, "But I think there's something behind us."

"Really? What" Ruby said, whirling around faster than seemed humanly possible.

A pack of Beowolves stood behind us. Quickly, I counted five of them in total.

"You think we can take them?" I muttered, not looking at Ruby as I tried to keep my eyes on all of the monsters at once.

"Can we take them?" Ruby asked, almost seeming incredulous. She shook her head, then charged. The five monsters mirrored her.

I don't know if I've covered this, but that girl is _fast_. She closed the distance to the first Grimm in a heartbeat and immediately began to engage it, having drawn and extended her scythe in the process... She struck with her scythe, but he creature blocked it with its claws.

I watched as Ruby attacked the Grimm. She didn't hold her ground, she continued to advance, pushing forward into the monsters even as they piled onto her, first one, then another.

And the other ones were coming for me. Shit. I went for my machine gun, but of course Ruby had dropped it when she charge the Beowolves. That meant I was stuck with my Sting Blades.

As the first Grimm reached me, I raised my arms into a reasonable approximation of a fighting stance, activating the trigger to extend the blades over my arms.

The Beowolf reached me and attacked with an overhead swipe. I raised my hand to block it, trusting the gauntlet on my forearm to blunt the slicing claws enough I could hold off the attack.

It worked. The force shot down my arm, the sheer power of the blow shocking me. I was pretty badly outclassed here. I had to do something. _Come on, think. What do I have that this ravenous beast does not? My brain. Ok, that's one thing_.

As the Grimm recovered its paw from the attack, I punched. The creature drew back, and by fist didn't connect, but the blade jutting several inches out from it did. The tip of the triangular Sting Blade dug into the tissue of the Grimm, drawing a trickle of blood. Then I swung my arm outward, slicing a long, thin cut across the skin of the monster.

The beast howled as I did so, then swung its paw at me horizontal to the ground at about neck height. Had I not placed my gauntlet between my soft, tender flesh and the claws of the Beowolf, the fight would have ended right there. However, I managed to block successfully, though the force of the blow caused my fist to hit my head. That hurt.

I ducked backwards to avoid the next attack, a clawing motion aimed at my belly. _That was close. _I thought, making a similar dodge against the next attack. _This is no good_ I thought, staggering back as I caught another blow._ I'm being driven back! I can't let them separate me from Ruby; she's the only one who knows how to fight these things!_

I spared a glance back at Ruby. She seemed to be doing fine, having already decapitated one of the Grimm attacking her. However, the fifth Beowolf had attacked her, keeping the odds at three to one.

I needed to change tactics. As the monster attacked again, I dodged into the attack, stepping inside its guard. I doubt it would have worked on a human opponent, but this thing was dumber, and had more inertia behind its attacks. It couldn't change course as quickly as a man could have.

Once inside its guard, I made two quick jabs toward what I guessed was below its ribcage. That wasn't hard; the thing was considerably taller than I was.

My blades met flesh, drawing blood from the thing as they sunk up to my fists in the monster. I tried to pull them out, but my left hand blade caught on something. I Staggered as I pulled it out, my other hand waving in the air.

The Beowolf was kind enough to assist me at that point, knocking my backward with a hasty blow from its elbow. It roared at me as it recovered, moving seemingly without pain despite the three considerable injuries leaking blood into its jet-black coat. I know if I took stabs like that, I wouldn't still be up.

At that moment, Ruby sliced her scythe across the chest of one of the Grimm attacking her, dropping the wolf-beast. _Maybe I need to focus less on little cuts and more on gross tissue damage._

I took a step sideways away from the Grimm and extended my right arm. As the creature turned to face me, I activated the hidden trigger that fired the launcher built into the gauntlets of the Sting Blades.

A bolt of blue-white pure kinetic force ripped out from the gauntlet and struck the Grimm in the center of the chest. It didn't seem to hurt the beast much, but it knocked it off balance.

Then I went for the jugular.

I jumped forward and raised by blades over my head, then brought them down across the thing's neck, cutting a nice 'X' into its upper body.

The creature dropped. It was the best thing in the world, the feeling of standing with the corpse of a slain enemy at your feet. I suppose it was admixed somewhat by the knowledge that what I had just killed was a soulless beast, and the accompanying complete lack of guilt, but in the moment, I'm not sure that that mattered to me.

And that scares me.

In any case, that left two of us, and two Beowolves facing, for better or worse, my partner.

In this world, there was a lot I couldn't do. I couldn't fall out of the sky unassisted and survive. I could fly around on the recoil from my weapons. I wasn't even very good at this whole sword fighting thing.

But I could fire a machine gun. I ran forward and grabbed my machine gun from where ruby had dropped it. I leveled the machine gun at one of the Beowolves attack Ruby. There only seemed one appropriate thing to say.

"Come at me, bro!" I shouted, and fired a long burst of gunfire.

The creature paused mid swing and turned toward me. I fired a second burst, and the thing began to charge at me. I dropped the machine gun and met the charge head-on.

The Beowolf seemed to be favoring one leg slightly. If that leg had been wounded more than the other, may that whole side of the thing was weak.

As it closed, the thing swung both of its paws at me. I raised my gauntlets to block one of the attacks, but the other slipped under my guard. However, it struck my Aura rather than me, and was deflected in a flash of light. I suppose on some level, blocking such a fearsome attack tired me. However, at that point, I was too strung out on adrenaline to notice.

As the Grimm recovered from its exaggerated blow, I responded with a quick left hook. My punch struck the monster, and the blade on my fist tore through the monster's blood-matted fur, sending up a spray of blood. I felt something hot splatter across my face, but that wasn't important.

I didn't let up or give the thing a chance to recover. I fired the kinetic launcher on my gauntlet, knocking the thing backwards, then launched a fury of blows on the Grimm.

It fought back feebly, by was very quickly subdued beneath my attacks.

As my foe dropped, Ruby decapitated the last of the Grimm, then turned to look at me. She seemed rather surprised. I guess her fighting style is somewhat neater.

"Don't worry," I said. "Most of it is his."

"Wow," Ruby said. "I've never seen someone with a fighting style like that."

"I'm sorry," I said, reaching up to scratch the back of my head. "I guess I'm not very good at this thing."

"No, it's not that," Ruby said. "It's just all of the... well... blood. Not even my sister uses weapons like that."

"I couldn't think of anything better at the time." I said, as we turned and collected my machine gun.

"Oh, so then you made your weapon too?" Ruby asked, as we began walking deeper into the forest.

"No, it was given to me." I said, "It was on a request. I had a couple of options."

"I see." Ruby said.

This was starting to feel a little awkward. I wondered what I could do to make the conversation better.

"So, how was the flight to Beacon?" I asked, trying to think of a topic for small talk.

"It was pretty good. One guy vomited on my sister's shoes. Jaune Arc, have you met him?"

"No, I just got here, remember?" I gestured over my head. "I used the parachute and all that. But I have heard of Jaune."

"Really, how?"

"His family is somewhat famous." I said. "A lot of famous people come to this school. Like Pyrra, for example."

"Oh yeah." Ruby said.

"I'm sorry." I said, shaking my head. "I'm a little awkward with this sort of thing."

"Yeah, me too." Ruby said. "I've never been very good at talking to people."

"Dorks unite, I suppose." I said.

Ruby smiled.

I returned to my thoughts. What was I doing here? More importantly, _why_ was I here? While those questions were something that had bothered me for most of my life, now they took on a completely new and much more immediately pertinent meaning.

I kept walking into the forest.


	2. Chapter 2

Walking. You'd be surprised how much of it being transported to another dimension involves. In time since I was transported to this dimension, met Ruby, and killed my first monsters, I've started to come to hate it. Particularly this, walking it what amounts to a combat zone. You're constantly on edge, which wears you down, but also grates pretty hard on how _boring_ it gets really quickly. Honestly, I don't know how soldiers do it.

_Correction_. I thought, some sick, twisted part of me smug at the thought, _I'm going to have to learn how they do it, because that what I am now_.

Ruby and I walked through the forest for what seemed like close to an hour, constantly on the lookout for more Grimm. On occasion, we heard the sounds of gunfire in the distance, a constant reminder of the pressing danger of present in the forest.

"I've been thinking." I said, pushing a low-hanging branch away from my face, "What do they expect us to do about stray bullets?"

"What do you mean?" Ruby said, turning towards me as she walked under the same branch.

"Well, there are a lot of is in this forest, and if the sound is any indication, at least some people are doing a lot of shooting? What if one of them misses, and the bullets hit one of us?"

"Well, if it was just one bullet, I suppose our Auras would block it." Ruby said. "Assuming they weren't too depleted from combat, anyway."

"Yeah, I guess so."

I considered that for a moment. I didn't have any experience with it, but back home, being hit by stray bullets was a constant concern for hunters in conditions just like the ones we were in now. It was something they put a lot of thought into avoiding. Having a concern like that just waved away was...

I'm not really sure what it was. But it was definitely something.

"So, do you have any idea where we're going?"

"No," Ruby responded. "Just... North."

At that moment, I pushed through a particularly thick section of brush and into a large clearing. The forest curved in on either side toward a large cliff, forming a large 'D' shape. Resting in the center of the clearing was a large, ruined-looking stone dais.

It appeared to have been abandoned for some time. Most of one wall was missing, and tumbledown stones that were the same blue-grey color as the rest of the temple were scattered around the ruin.

As we walked closer, I saw several pillars, at least a couple dozen, forming a 'C' around the inside of the temple. Resting on them were... Chess pieces?

"Oh, right." I mumbled. "Team selection is based on which pieces we pick." I took another look around the area. "This doesn't look quite like it did in canon."

"What did you say?" Ruby asked, turning toward me as we walked toward the temple. "Something about cannons?"

I waved my arm. "It's nothing."

As we got closer to the temple, it became clear that some of the pieces had already been removed. Apparently, we weren't the first ones here.

"So... we just pick one, right?" I said, pointing at the white, or in this case gold, queen.

"I think so." Ruby said. "Which one do you want?"

"Any of them will do, I guess." Unfortunately, I don't have the slightest clue which of the pieces any of the canon teams picked, so I figured I would just take one at random and see what happened.

I shrugged and picked up the queen piece. It was, after all, the most powerful. I wondered briefly where to put it, then remembered the numerous pockets and pouches sewn into the garment I had found myself in. I shrugged again and slipped the queen into one of the pockets on the outside of my thigh.

At that moment, the trees at one point on the edge of the clearing began shaking violently, then a pair of them fell over, revealing a raging Ursi which what appeared to be an orange-haired girl on its back.

_Nora_! I recognized her at once. She was... memorable, if nothing else.

Moments after bursting into the clearing in a blind rage, the Ursa collapsed slowly to the ground and stopped moving.

"Aww, it's broken." Nora said, stepping off of the dead Usra.

I squinted at the forest next to where she had emerged. If things stayed true to canon, that green guy, Lie Ren, would emerge next to her. He was a skilled fighter and, if I could lure him into picking the Black Queen piece, would be a useful ally.

A Girl with long, teal-green hair wearing what appeared to be lightweight armor made of a silvery material walked out of the forest next to where Nora had emerged.

Not As Planned.

Who was this girl? I was certain that I had never seen her in the show; her outfit looked also practical, for one thing. As she walked closer, I noticed that her arms appeared to be a slightly darker shade of silver than her armor. Maybe it was made of a different metal or something.

"Hey," I shouted as she walked closer, waving an arm over my head. "The finish line's right about here."

Nora appeared to have vanished, but I didn't notice that. I probably should have.

"Thanks," She responded, also waving her arms over her head. "I noticed that."

I took a step off of the dais and began walking toward her.

"Hey, are you out of place, by any chance?"

She cocked her head. "No. What do you mean by that?"

"Nevermind." I said. I guess that meant she wasn't from Earth like me. Otherwise, I think she would have reacted differently to that question. "So, you're teamed up with Nora, huh?"

"Yeah," She looked around, confused. "Where did she- Anyway, I ran into Nora in the forest a little while south of here." She said. As she gestured, I noticed that her arms seemed to be moving a bit oddly. Nothing I could put my finger on, but still.

"Anyway, she's something of a handful, but she means well, I think," The girl said.

"I'm the Queen of the Castle! I'm the Queen of the Castle!"

I whirled around. It was Nora, balancing the Black Queen piece on her head. That meant she was on my team.

I was stuck with Nora Valkyrie for the next four years.

Not. As. Planned.

So does this mean we're teammates?" I said, turning back towards the other girl.

"We team up with the other person to pick the same relic." I said.

She narrowed her eyes. "How do you know that?"

"I- Um- That is I... Just a hunch, I guess."

She laughed. "Anyway, I don't think I got your name."

"My name? I'm... Mark... Adams. What about you?"

"Celarndha Iskosia" She said, pronouncing her name CEL-ar-EN-da. It was odd, but given that I wasn't giving her my real name, I figured that I was in no place to complain.

"There's no point hanging around here any longer than necessary." I said, trying to change the subject. I had no idea how things were still proceeding, but it was always possible that Pyrra was still luring a Deathstalker to this location, in which case I wanted to get out of here.

Celarndha, Nora, Ruby, and I were all had been walking away from the forest temple for some time now. The cliffs rose before us in the distance, and the forest filled our view to one side.

After some deliberation, we had chosen to take the southern route and skirt around the edges of the forest, rather than taking the more direct route through the northern ruins. That would have been faster, but I had firmly vetoed that idea. I could pull some of the ridiculous acrobatic combat maneuvers that seemed to be necessary to fight there.

We were walking along the edge of the forest in a diamond formation, with me in point, Nora and Celarndha on the edges, and Ruby taking up the rear. Ruby had wanted to lead the formation, but I had pointed out that her speed would allow her to reach the front of the formation easily, more so than any of the rest of us. She seemed to have accepted the concept, but she had grumbled something before assuming her position.

As we walked, something occurred to me. Something that I would really miss about home.

The reading. I would never get to read Words of Radiance, let alone find out how the Stormlight Archive ended, among others.

I mean, sure, there was family, friends, casual acquaintances, and that sort of thing, and I would miss them. However, the loneliness of my situation hadn't really set in yet, and I hadn't started to miss people from my old world. Beyond that, it wasn't like I was transported to a medieval setting. They had running water, electricity, and air conditioning.

It would be just like being away at camp, or going to college.

Forever.

I sighed.

"Hey." Celarndha said, jogging forward to stand next to me. "What's wrong?"

"Wrong? Nothing." I said, totally not exhibiting any of the Major Physiological Indicators of Deceit in an Adolescent Male Human.

"We both know that's a lie." Celarndha said, putting her hand on my shoulder. It felt... odd.

"It's just that I..."

"Homesickness, right?"

Sure. We can work with that. "Yes," I said, sighing.

"I see. You're not from around here, are you?" She asked, tilting her head inquisitively.

"You have no idea." I said. I was really hoping she wouldn't press the matter too far, because unlike Randland, I hadn't memorized a map of Remnant. I would have absolutely no way to come up with a-

"Huh. Where are you from?"

My thoughts froze. I needed to come up with something-

Celarndha's eyes narrowed. She raised a hand and gestured in the air.

Much to my surprise, a line of blue-white light followed her finger. She moved her finger rapidly, drawing something in the air with a filigree of light. In a moment, she was finished. The thing she had drawn looked something like a crosshair, with a rather intricate emblem in the center.

As I watched, the circle expanded, becoming a blurry disk outlined in light hanging in the air.

"Wait a second." I said, perhaps a little loudly. "How can you do that?"

"It's my Semblance. I draw certain patterns in the air, and things happen." Celarndha responded with a terse whisper, not looking at me.

"Great." I muttered. "So your Semblance is AonDor. Wonderful."

"What was that?"

"Nothing." I said

"Anyway, look." Celarndha said, grabbing me and pulling me in front of the disk.

Now that I was in front of it, the image looking through it became much clearer. Maybe it worked like a lens. Through the disk, I could see the open, sky, filled with puffy clouds. There was, also, directly in the center of the disk, a large black dot, a spot of pure blackness on the sky.

"What is it?" I asked, confused.

"I don't know, but I don't like it." Celarndha responded.

"How far away do you think the cliffs are?" I asked

I looked at the massive cliffs in the distance, doubtful. I wasn't a great runner, and I doubted I could keep up with the group. The mission briefing in the capsule had said my physical deficiencies had been corrected, but did than mean I could do it?

"Maybe a couple of miles." She said.

So we ran. We made good time, and I covered ground more quickly than I could have expected, and the cliffs grew steadily in the distance as we approached. If we thought we were in real danger, we could have sent Ruby ahead as a messenger, but that seemed unnecessary.

Every so often, Celarndha would call a halt and sketch another glyph in the air. I was thankful for these halts, as even with the physical enhancements I had received, I still wasn't a great runner. The spot had grown somewhat larger as it approached, and drifted around us in the sky. Celarndha would use her magnification disk to search for and attempt to examine it, but each time she reported that she couldn't make out any details.

"I wonder what it is." Nora said, somehow not out of breath, "Why are we so scared of?"

"Because it could be a fully grow Nevermore." I panted. "We don't want to fight that."

"Aww, I think we could take him." Nora said, making a punching motion. "It's just a birdie. It can't be too tough."

"You'd be surprised. They're tougher than they look."

"Ooh, have you fought one?" Nora asked, seeming more interested than was perhaps healthy.

"No," I said, as carefully as I could under the conditions. "But I've seen it done before. It was a hard fight."

I took a deep breath. What I wouldn't give for motorcycle or some horses right about now.

At that moment, the speck, which had recently drifted into a position almost dead ahead of us, began to shine. No, shine was the wrong word. Shine implies light, which this definitely wasn't. Whatever it was, it looked like it was drawing closer.

Then, what felt like a lead pipe slammed into by upper back, knocking me forward off my feet.

Just as I hit the ground, a beam of what looked like dark light shot overhead and sliced into the ground behind me with a strange, unearthly shriek.

My head snapped around, and I looked back at the person who had knocked me down. And saved my life. It as Celarndha. I could still feel the impact on by back; for some reason, my Aura hadn't stopped her from pushing me.

"What's your arm made out of?" I mumbled as I climbed to my feet. "Metal?" She wasn't, as far as I could see, wearing any armor on her arms.

"Umm... Yeah." Celarndha responded, picking herself up. "They are."

"What is...? I don't... nevermind." I said. I don't remember anyone with robot arms from RWBY, so this was definitely new to me. "I- INCOMING!"

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted another beam incoming. I ran one way, and Celarndha ran the other. The beam didn't twist as it approached the ground, however, and it cleavered into the earth right where we had been standing, once again producing that earsplitting screeching noise.

"What the hell is that thing?" I shouted, bouncing on the balls of my feet, ready to dodge any further beam attacks.

"I have no idea?" Celarndha respond. Her eyes were wide. She looked just as panicked as I was.

I looked back at the speck in the sky, though it was much less of a speck now. It had closed most of the distance between us in the time while we were busy dodging its attacks, and many more of its details were visible now.

The creature, the _Grimm_, for that was what it had to be, looked like a bird. But not like a Nevermore. For one thing, this creature was _much_ larger. It was almost jet black, with flames of blackness flickering around it. Lastly, it was shaped not like a scavenger bird, but a noble, mighty bird of prey. This was a terrible, deadly beast, and in an instant, I knew its name.

A Void Phoenix.

I whirled around toward Ruby. "Ruby, run back to beacon and get help! This thing is more than we can take alone!"

"But I want to help you fight it!" She shouted back, holding her scythe out to the side as it unfolded and its tip dug into the ground. "I can help!"

"We need help from the Academy more than we need another rifle on the line now." I responded. "I-"

I was cut off as another beam of darkness lanced down from the creature hovering overhead. I got the side, but apparently I didn't get entirely clear from the path of the beam of darkness I felt a horrible tearing sensation across my entire body. Oddly enough, the sensation also extended a few inches beyond my skin, a meta-sensation that was so bizarre that it almost eclipsed the soul-crushing wave of pain that washed over me.

I crumpled to the ground, groaning. It felt like, though I wasn't really sure how I knew, that much of my Aura's energy had been torn away from me. As I fell, I saw ruby take off like the Road Runner, charging toward the Academy.

The Void Phoenix overhead rotated slowly in the air, turning toward Ruby. Perhaps it needed to align some part of its body with its target to aim its energy beam.

As the creature turned, I gritted my teeth and pulled myself to my knees. I reached over my shoulder and grabbed my machine gun, the cold weight of the metal a comfortable grounding sensation in my hands.

I raised the weapon to my shoulder and drew a bead on the Void Phoenix, then screamed and pulled the trigger.

Thankfully, it seemed that the box of ammo I loaded after the fight with the Beowolves contained tracer ammunition. Bright streaks of light rose in a flash, one after another, toward my target.

My first burst of gunfire went wide, shooting into the sky above and to the right of the Grimm monstrosity. I adjusted my aim and fired a second burst, then walked my fire onto my target.

The creature _screamed_ as my bullets tore into its flesh, a hideous, unearthly sound similar to and yet completely unlike any of the Grimm cries I had heard in my short time here.

Wincing at the sound, I held down the trigger of my gun until the magazine clicked empty, which it did very quickly. _Shit. That's the drawback to this weapon, short mag._

I reached to a strap mounted on the underside of my backpack, where the asshole who had designed my gear had helpfully added several reserve magazines on tear-away straps for easy reach in combat.

As my fingers closed on my replacement magazine, pink explosions began to burst in the air, one after another, around the Phoenix. Nora.

I looked at her as ejected the empty magazine and inserted the new one. She was standing behind and to the side of me, firing her grenade launcher at the flying creature.

As it fired another beam of darkness at her, she jumped to the side and did a perfect cartwheel, somehow retaining her grenade launcher as she did so.

"Betcha can't hit me! Betcha can't hit me!" She shouted, taunting the creature as she brought her grenade launcher back into firing position.

Before Nora could get a shot off, a bolt of force shot up from the side, near the forest, and struck the flying creature. It was a translucent, swirling blast which, when it impacted, exploded in a burst of light with a defining crack. I actually saw the Void Phoenix shift backwards in the air as it was struck, and it beat its wings frantically to stabilize itself.

I followed the luminous trail that followed the bolt back to its source. It was Celarndha, who had the fading remains of a complex expanding glyph handing in the air before her.

The Phoenix recovered with unnatural speed, and as Celarndha began sketching a second glyph, it fired another beam of darkness, this one at a much shorter range than the others.

There was next to no time for her to dodge. She crossed her arms, her apparently metal arms, in front of her face in the split second while the beam knifed through the air towards her as she threw herself to the side.

The beam struck. This time, its horrible wail alloyed by the terrible combination of an all-too-human scream.

"NORA! ESCAPE AND EVADE INTO THE FOREST!" I shouted, running towards the woods and firing long burst from my hip at the hovering creature.

"WHAT ABOUT CELARNDHA?" She responded, running towards the crumpled and slightly smoking form of our fallen comrade.

"SHE DOWN! WE HAVE TO HOPE IT WILL LEAVE HER!"

I could tell Nora didn't like it. I sure as hell didn't like it either. Not leaving your comrades behind was part of the code of honor for just about every decent warrior in my world, and I imagined the same was true on Remnant. The only thing that let me go through with it was the hope that help would arrive from Beacon and we wouldn't be leaving Celarndha behind permanently.

As I crossed into the forces, I heard gunfire. It wasn't mine, and I was the only member of (proving to be short-lived) team still equipped with a firearm.

I whirled around, mostly on instinct toward the source of the gunfire. It was Pyrrha Nikos, advancing slowly and confidently out of the words, her weapon in the form of a rifle in her hands, firing shot after shot at the Void Phoenix. As I watched, she ejected a clip from the magazine and inserted a new one, calm as you like.

"What are you doing?" I said, looking back at the Phoenix nervously. "Do you know how strong that thing is?"

"I heard it scream and figured I wouldn't let you guys have all the fun." She responded, punctuating her words by putting three more bullets into the hovering creature.

"That was screaming!" I shouted, backing into the forest. "That was its frickin laser beam!"

She went wide eyed, and her next shot missed the Grimm. She turned around and ran into the forest, just as Jaune Arc ran out of the woods. He stopped and looked around in confusion, before the creature overhead pivoted towards him.

He raised his shield, just as the Void Phoenix foried its energy beam at him. There was a flash of light as it stuck, and Jaune was left standing in the same position as just before the beam hit.

"What was that?" He muttered as he staggered backwards.

"Fly, you fool!" I shouted. Jaune seemed to get the message, and he turned and began to run into the forest. I reloaded my machine gun and laid down another burst of fire on the hovering creature. Why was it just floating there, occasionally firing its (admittedly insanely powerful) beam weapon at us? Since when did the Grimm have directed energy weapons at all?

When my machine gun was about half empty, I turned around and began running into the forest.

The Void Phoenix followed. It dove downward as I ran, slamming into the forest canopy. Wood shattered under the force of its incredible bulk and speed, and chips rained down on me. I dodged to the side and rolled, managing to retain my weapon as I did so.

The monster beat its wings and began to rise in the air again, and I took off at a diagonal away from it, my terror pumped adrenaline ripping through my exhaustion and banishing it to some distant part of my being where it wasn't quite gone.

I ran frantically through the forest, dodging around trees, fallen logs, rocks, and boulders. Briefly, I wondered why it wasn't using its beam attack again. Maybe it had run out of ammunition for it or something.

The dark beast kept easy pace with me as I ran. I probably would have given up, had it not been for the knowledge that Ruby was bringing back aid and that I was luring the beast away from a fallen comrade. I had always idly considered becoming a soldier. Now was my chance.

Suddenly, I burst into unobstructed sunlight. I was in another forest clearing. I turned around to run as the beast flew past me overhead, but hesitated. I wasn't trained in escape and evasion; I couldn't hope to outrun this thing or lose it in the forest. If I stayed in one place, it would batter through the treetops and get to me.

I had to stand and fight.

The Void Phoenix banked slowly and turned toward me, moving much more slowly than I got the sense that it could. Was it playing with its food?

As it closed, I fired the rest of my magazine at it, by most of the rounds went wide. I stowed my machine gun on my back and deployed my Sting Blades. This looked like a short-range fight.

The thing barreled toward me. I had to stay on my feet, and not let it grab onto me and takeoff. Either would be a death sentence.

At the last second, I jumped to the side, like a matador dodging a bull. As the thing shot past me, parallel to the forest, I raised my arms and sliced into its wing with my blades.

As it began to gain altitude again, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a white and pink blur launch out of the forest and go flying toward the Void Phoenix on a ballistic trajectory. A large hammer sprouted from the blur just before it impacted the massive bird-creature, which appeared to have failed to spot it.

The blur impacted with a flash of pink dust and a thunderclap. It bounced off of the Grimm, with appeared to be writhing with pain from the impact, and landed next to me, where it unfurled into Nora Valkyrie.

"Hey, Mark!" She said, "I found a fallen log on the way here that made a _great_ trampoline." Her face fell. "It's broken, though."

"That's great, Nora." I said, my eyes still on the Phoenix, which had recovered and was circling back around to attack us again.

"I saw the damage you did to the forest on the way here, too." Nora said. "It was pretty impressive, with you screaming, and then that thing screaming." She began gesturing wildly with her grenade launcher. "I bet you were all like POW! And then it was like BLAM! And-"

"Nora? Enough. Now is not the time for that!" I barked, watching the phoenix.

Nora seemed to deflate slightly, then she turned to face the Void Phoenix. Then I thought I heard something over the sound of the wingbeats of the creature. It sounding like... propellers?

Then a gunshot rang out. Rising from the forest came an aircraft, one that looked a lot like a tilt-rotor from back home. It rotated, and I could see it had an open-air cargo bay, much like the craft that Torchwick guy used in the first episode.

Two people were in the cargo bay. Ruby, lying prone, with Crescent Rose in its sniper rifle form, and Glynda Goodwitch, who was brandishing her riding crop. As it watched, she gestured with it, and a bolt of purplish light shot from the tip and struck the Void Phoenix. She gestured, and the pilot of the craft spun it around as the Phoenix recovered from the impact and sent it careening towards it.

I saw the impact in slow motion. The nose of the craft impacted the Phoenix, which was only slightly smaller than it was. The nose of the craft crumpled and the tilt-rotor buckled in the air, but it knocked the Phoenix backwards, sending the monster crashing into the ground.

I charged. I ran forward, toward where the fallen bird-monster was twitching. Amazingly, the creature didn't seem dead yet, and appeared to be attempting to regain its feet, presumably to take off again.

As I closed, the creature got one wing into the air. I jumped as I reached the creature and grabbed a handful of the feathers that covered its body in my right hand. I stabbed my left-hand sting blade into its flesh, then grabbed another handhold and pulled myself onto the Phoenix's chest.

I walked forward, my footing unsteady. Twice, I was nearly dislodged by the motions of the creature, but I kept my balance. The... flesh around me was covered in a variety of wounds, many of which appeared to have been caused by my machine gun. Oddly, they didn't seem to be as severe as I would have expected, which I suppose made sense. This thing had taken a tremendous amount of punishment, even for something of its size.

Hands out for balance, I arrived at my destination. The head of the creature. I looked at its head for a moment, then knelt down and cut its throat.

Then, as its struggles began to cease, my exhaustion overcame me, and I fainted.


	3. Chapter 3

I awoke slowly. It was a long process, and when I reached something approaching full consciousness, I took a moment to asses my surroundings.

I was on an _unbelievably_ comfortable bed, one that felt like a cloud of butter. Judging by how I felt, I was also high as a kite on the Remnant equivalent of prescription painkillers. I didn't open my eyes, however, as that just seemed like too much to bother with.

So I did the sensible thing and went back to sleep.

When I awoke the second time, I felt immensely better. There was a strange pain in most of my body, but my head was clear, and I didn't feel too tired to open my eyes.

The bed still felt nice, though.

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.

I was lying on my back, my head on another incredibly soft pillow. Above me was an unfamiliar ceiling.

I'm sorry.

I looked around. I appeared to be in what could reasonably be considered a fairy-tale technomagic equivalent of a hospital room. IV drip equivalent, check. ECG equivalent, thankfully turned off, check. Tables covered with supplies of undeterminable purpose, check. Ruby, sitting in a beacon academy uniform on the foot of my bed, check.

Wait what?

I sat myself up, then rearranged my pillows to prop myself up.

"Ruby? What are you doing here?" I asked, surprised at the horse weakness in my voice.

She seemed shocked that I was awake. "WhatOhIwasn'tsleeping!" She blurted out as I undoubtedly awakened her "Oh, Mark. It's just you. Welcome back to the land of the living."

"It's good to be back." I said, my voice, though still weak, recovering. "How long was I out?"

"Why." A completely different female voice asked from behind my head, "Is that always the first thing you people ask when you wake up?"

I raised an eyebrow. If I wasn't mistaken, it was, Celarndha. "What do you mean, you people?

"Err, people who are knocked out." Ruby said. "I may have had some experience with them at signal."

"Do you mean had some experience or caused some experience?" Celarndha asked, chuckling.

Ruby blushed. "It's not that I- er, that is... yes."

I didn't feel like pressing the subject on what exactly 'yes' meant. "So, not to get back on topic or anything, but how long _have_ I been unconscious?"

"Three and a half days, now." Celarndha said. "We've been worried about you." I got the impression that she was rolling her eyes. "Or at least I've been worried about you. Nora seems confident that you'll be fine, and Ruby hasn't really said all that much."

"You guys haven't been here all that time, have you?" I asked, shocked. Even if my hope that I wouldn't change the timeline much was shot to hell, I had still decided that I didn't want to be an imposition here.

"It hasn't been that big a deal." Ruby said. "I mean, Professor Ozpin said that we could miss classes to watch you here, so at least there's that."

"Miss classes?" I asked, "Why?"

"Oh, I guess you wouldn't have gotten the memo." Celarndha said. "You missed the assignment ceremony. We're all on the same team, team ARCN." She pronounced the word 'Arcane'.

I was on a team with Ruby, Celarndha, and Nora. Three girls. This was going to be awkward as hell.

"So, when are they letting me out of this joint?" I asked, suppressing my concern about my team placement.

"They said you could leave anytime, as long as you were rested enough to stand up straight." Celarndha said. "Although it's presently about three in the morning. I doubt you'd want to get back to sleep so soon after such a long nap, so..."

"I get the idea." I said, pushing the covers off of me. Thankfully, I was wearing a hospital gown, or else the situation could have jumped a few levels of absurd right there. "I'll just walk around or something."

"If you don't mind," Ruby said, standing up and yawning, "I'm going to go get some sleep."

No one said anything, so she left.

"She's going back to the dorm room." Celarndha said, seeing my confused look. "Ruby and Nora... well, the room might just violate some of the building codes now."

"I'd imagine." I said. I knew full well just what Ruby had been involved in putting a room through in the canon, and with Nora there to amplify her and no Weiss to moderate her excess in architecture, the sky really was the limit.

So, without further ado, I stood up. My legs felt a little weak, but I chalked that up to disuse.

"So," I said, walking toward the door, "What exactly happened out there after I got knocked out."

"The Void Phoenix exploded." Celarndha said.

I froze. Now that was interesting. Either the casual name I had come up with, and not shared with anyone, had become the official term for the creature we had fought, or I had somehow, without any sort of external influence, guessed the correct term for the beast.

"And I assume that I got caught up in the blast?" I said, without humor.

"Yeah, but it was only a small explosion." Celarndha said, holding her fingers next to each other for emphasis. "Your aura took the worst of the explosion. You weren't really thrown anywhere, and you didn't break anything. I think I head one of the doctors say that it was mostly exhaustion that caused you to pass out."

"I think that's right." I said. "I don't remember an explosion."

"That's good to hear." Celarndha said. "Now, I think you can look after yourself, so I'm going to catch some shuteye before classes start."

With that, she walked past me and out the door. I looked around the room for a moment, then spotting nothing of interest, walked out the door as well.

By the time I got outside the hospital room, Celarndha was already gone. I walked to the end of the hallway, where I spotted a sign pointing to a 'FRONT DESK'. I walked in the direction it indicated for at least a minute, occasionally passing similar signs. It looked like Beacon Academy had a very large and well-prepared causality section, or infamy, or nurse's office, or whatever it was called.

When I reached the front desk, there was one person stationed at the front desk, which appeared to be equipped to handle several receptionists.

"Hello, she said, turning toward me. She was a youngish woman, maybe somewhere in her twenties or early thirties, with brown hair and bright eyes. "I suppose your Mark, right?"

"Yes," I said, confused. "How did you know?"

"You're our only resident patient at the moment." She said, "Everyone else from the initiation has either been transferred out or recovered enough to me moved to the dorms. That stupid flinging-kids-into-the-woods thing is going to get someone killed someday."

"If it hasn't already." I said. It seemed best just to agree with her. "Um, I don't think I caught your name." I said.

"Me?" She said. "I'm nurse Grieves. Pleased to meet you."

"Thanks." I said. "So, are you the only person here on night shift?"

"Some nights." She said, looking at the clock on the wall. "I have one of the night watches, so to speak. Congratulations, by the way."

I raised an eyebrow. "On what?"

"Well, on being appointed team leader, for one thing, and on killing that Void Phoenix thing." Grives said, as killing a giant, laser-firing superbird were the sort of thing people did every day, though at this school, they very well might.

"Wait, what? I swear you said something about team leader." I said. "That can't be right."

"Oh, it is" The nurse said, smiling.

I burst out of the medical wing, panting. _I_ was the team leader? Inconceivable! Not only was I saddled with a team of all girls, which was going to be... awkward, I was put in a leadership role. I was never good at that sort of thing! What the hell was that Ozpin character thinking?

I wandered through the hallways of Beacon aimlessly, too wired by the strange events of the past... half week, really, to even consider going to sleep. That, and the fact that I had forgotten to ask where the dorm rooms were.

As I walked, I moved in a vaguely downward direction down slanting corridors and grand, sweeping, staircases. As I walked, I occasionally passed large, picturesque windows, from which I slowly figured out that beacon was built into the cliffside it was built on. It gave the facility a commanding view, but from a modern sense, didn't seem very defensible. Then again, it didn't seem like the Grimm that were the Academy's primary worry had any form of artillery and relied primarily on melee combat, so I suppose that that was less of a concern for them.

_But still_, I thought as I walked,_ what about that one that I fought in the forest? What was the deal with _that_ Grimm_?

I was so engrossed in thought, I barely paid any attention to where it was I was going. Before too long, I found myself in what seemed like the basement level of the Academy. It was dimly lit, and the design and decoration of the hallways seemed less grandiose than that of much of the rest of the academy.

Walking down a long hallway with few doors, I came across one at the end of a branching hallway that had light shining out from under it. I walked down the hallway, put my hand on the knob, and hesitated. This was definitely something outside the domain of what was covered by the canon. If I opened this door, who knew what lay on the other side?

I opened the door. Inside was a large room, laid out much like the engineering room at my school crossed with an old-style operating theater. Seats were positioned in concentric half-circles around a large central area, and elevated in a slope down toward the center. There was plenty of space at each of the desks, and I imagined that if I were to look, I would find a full workstation at each one for... whatever class this was.

The decor of the room was decidedly baroque, with strange wooden fixtures in the corners and lining the edges of the walls. There was also a strange smell in the air, one that I couldn't quite place.

Finally, I looked toward the center of the room. There was a man facing away from me in a lab coat, examining something sitting on a large table in front of him. I walked forward cautiously, trying to get a glimpse of what he was working on.

"Oh, hello there." He said, turning around to face me. He was a youngish man, and somewhat handsome. He wore a full-length lab coat, and had blue hair down to his neck.

"Um, hey." I said. "I may have gotten lost. Where exactly am I?"

"Beacon Academy Applied Biology and Grimm Anatomy Laboratory and classroom." He said, sweeping his hand across the room. "I run this place. I'm professor Kamarim."

"I'm Mark Adams." I said, flawlessly giving the false name I had assumed for use here. I wasn't really sure how I knew to use that name, but it had wound up on all my transcripts somehow, and hopefully I had a long enough paper trail that no one would bother to follow it all the way down the rabbit hole.

"Oh, I recognize you!" Kamarim said. "Fearless leader of team ARCN, am I right? You're the one who killed that Void Phoenix, aren't you?"

"Um... yes?" I said, not really sure of the correct response.

"Thanks for that, by the way." He said. "You've given me a boatload of new research material. Come over here! I've got to show you."

I walked over toward the Professor gingerly. He seemed earnest enough, but I figured that I couldn't be too careful.

As I approached the center table, I began to see what the Professor was examining. It looked like a large chunk of meat, with jet black feathers on one side. As I drew closer, I recognized it as a chunk of the giant thing I had killed. I think I saw the hole one of my bullets had made. It was a strange experience.

"So, have you made any progress examining this thing?" I said, coming to a stop next to Professor Kamarim. "This... Void Phoenix almost killed me. It would be pretty nice to know what makes it tick."

"Well, I'm afraid that I haven't made much progress so far." Kamarim said with a shrug. "However, what I have found has been _fascinating_." He spoke with the enthusiasm only a true scholar could muster.

"Interesting." I said. "How so?"

"Oh, well, come over here." He said, "Take a look at this." He gestured at a microscope-looking thing.

Not really sure what else to do, I walked over and looked into the thing. I looked like... well... it looked like a tissue sample. I've seen enough of them in school to know that they looked like. This was like one of those, but not exactly. There were some subtle differences, I really wasn't sure what exactly they were.

"That's... neat" I said. "So what exactly makes this tissue sample so intriguing?"

Kamarim's face lit up. "Oh, wonderful! So you know what a cell tissue sample looks like when you see one?"

I raised an eyebrow. "How is that so wonderful?"

"You're a combat school graduate, aren't you? You would have to be to have taken down this thing." Kamarim rolled his eyes. "You'd be surprised how many holes there are in the common knowledge with a lot of the kids who come out of those schools. You seem different, though."

"I guess you could say that."

"You must not have neglected your general science education, then." He said, seeming satisfied. "You simply must take my class, then, Introduction to Applied Biology and Grimm Anatomy, with lab."

"It'll... consider it." I said, not really sure how to react. I was pretty good at science, but I had never been the greatest at biology. Plus, there was the matter of maintaining my cover. I hadn't, in fact, gotten the Remnant Equivalent of a general education, and I figured there was a good chance it would show if I took and advanced science class. "What exactly would that entail?"

"Oh, a little of this, a little of that." He said, shaking his head. "We do Grimm dissections, vivisections when possible, Grimm biochemistry, study their deepness effects, and so forth."

"Wait, deepness effects? What the heck is that?"

Kamarim paused. "See? That's exactly the point I was making about the state of education provided at Combat Schools these days. They never teach you to ask the really important questions."

I froze for a moment, surprised by the sudden change in tack. "And what questions would those be, exactly?"

Kamarim sighed, rolling his eyes. "Ok. See, the Grimm are, by any natural standard, and entire category of incredible common apex predators."

"Okay."

"Well, what do they eat? How do they survive? How could any ecosystem support such a large number of predatory organisms?"

"But I thought the most Grimm only attacked humans, mostly." I said, now struggling to conceal the fact that I was in deep over my head.

"And they do." Kamarim said, "So then, eliminating natural animals as a food source, _what do the Grimm eat_?"

"I guess I never really thought about that."

"I'll let you in on a secret." Kamarim said, crouched down to whisper in my ear. "They don't."

"What do you mean by that?" I said, taking a step back.

"They aren't natural, but it goes far beyond what most people realize." Kamarim explained. "See, the Grimm aren't natural. That's what we call the Deepness Effects. The unnatural biology of the Grimm. Didn't you wonder how that Void Phoenix you killed could survive taking so much punishment?"

"It crossed my mind." I replied. I had, indeed, thought of it, though I hadn't really had much time for scientific inquiry at that point. I suspected, however, that it would have bothered me more if I had been given more time to mull it over.

"We'll, that's because It had _very_ strong Deepness effects. It Deepness was strong. The Deepness was strong with this one. Whatever. The terminology isn't very precise. It simply hasn't been that important, until now."

"And why is that?"

"Because that Void Phoenix had the strongest Deepness effect of any Grimm in recorded history." Kamarim said gravely.

"Wait, what?"

"You saw those beam attacks it fired, right?" Kamarim said, "Well, the only way those could have been produced was by a Grimm with incredibly powerful Deepness. No other Grimm has ever been recorded doing that. Of course, there are stories..."

"What do you mean, stories?" I demanded. This was getting weird, and way beyond anything from the canon. At the same time, it all made a sick sort of sense.

"From the War." He said. "Not the one a few generations back, the one in ancient history, when mankind first came to Remnant. Or perhaps when the Grimm first came to Remnant. The actual histories are worse than useless, more speculation on legend that any kind of fact."

"Makes sense." I said. "It was a long time ago."

At that moment, the door burst open. I turned around. The man walking in was tall, with short brown hair and a strange device over his left eye. It looked a bit like a monocle, with a clear lens in the center and a wide variety of mechanical devices extruding from the center.

"What are you doing, Kamarin?" He said, his voice lacking any sort of condemning or condescending tone, "Corrupting another of the fine youths of this academy, I see."

"Ah, professor Radiant! I could ask you what you're doing up at this hour." Kamarim respond, turning to face the newcomer.

"I couldn't sleep." He said, reaching up to adjust the thing over his eye. "I came to reclaim that dust case you borrowed from me a few days back."

"Ah... about that." Kamarim looked away and put his fingers on his chin. "I used that up on one of my experiments on this new specimen. Fascinating stuff."

One of the devices on Professor Radiant's monocle rotated a quarter turn. "All of it? That seems extreme, even for you."

"Yes... well... the thing you have to see is... TAKE THE BOY INSTEAD." He grabbed my shoulders and pushed me toward the newcomer.

Professor Radiant was taken aback. "I don't... you know what? Stopping whatever you're doing here is worth a case of dust. Come on, kid.

He gestured and, somewhat bewildered, I followed.

I arrived in what looked like a factory floor. The room had a high ceiling, which explained some of the confusion I had experienced while navigating, criss crossed by tracks of the kind used to lift and carry heavy equipment. Machines of various description covered the floor, which was littered by indescribable metallic items. Despite that, the whole room seemed very organized, with clear lanes laid out on the floor and the machines in a recognizable grid pattern.

"Don't worry, Kamarim and I are friends." Professor Radiant said, his voice fading as he walked away, toward the office attached to the machine-shop-slash-factory. "I doubt that he was really up to anything. You should take his class, its pretty good. Anyway, I think I have some spare uniforms around here somewhere, feel free to look around until classes start."

As he said that, I reached down and picked up what I recognized as a computer scroll from what looked like a bastardized drill press, figuring it must have a clock on it. As I opening it, hauntingly familiar text appeared on the screen of the device.

**Hello. I see you have chosen to call yourself Mark. A respectable name. In any event-**

_Why am I here?_ I entered on the keypad of the device.

**I'm afraid I can't tell you that. What I wanted to say was that you have done well, and I have elected to grant you a boon. I cannot send you home, and I cannot grant you anything outside reason, but I can give you something, knowledge or artifacts, to help you survive in this world.**

**You will need it.**

**So what do you pick?**

I froze. This was a pretty serious opportunity. Sure, I couldn't go home, but I hadn't really expected that to be an option for a long while. I had already subconsciously started the process of trying to sever the ties to my homeland. I seemed to have skipped most of the stages of grief and jumped straight to acceptance, but that may have had something to do with the rather hectic nature of my arrival.

Back to the topic at hand. I needed to decide what to ask for for my boon. Immediately, possibilities began to spin through my mind. I could ask for better weapons, though the one's that I had seemed like they were more than enough, at least for now. I could ask for more aura power, but I wasn't even sure if that was possible, and I didn't want to waste my wish on something that wasn't.

What to pick...? I could ask for something related to a Semblance, which I assume I possessed. Then again, Semblance was supposed to be a power everyone possessed, so I assume that I already had one. It might not be worth wasting my wish on something that I already had.

This was a thorny problem, and I was rapidly acquiring a new appreciation for the difficulty of making a decision when the genie pops out of his lamp. Of course, there was the chance that whatever I asked for would be horribly twisted and come out nothing like what I had asked for. That was definitely something to consider.

_What about my Semblance_. I finally entered. _Can I have something to give me the tactical mobility to keep up with the rest of my team?_

**No.** Came the response. **You already have a Semblance. No person may have more than one.**

Well that was something. I had gotten some information out of this... thing for free, which was nice. Still, if I already had a Semblance, then it probably wouldn't be worth asking just to unlock it. That seemed like it would be a waste.

I thought about it a bit more. Unfortunately, everything I came up with seemed to have a method of being distorted horrible built into it. I didn't want this thing messing around with my head or my aura, and asking for an artifact would create a lot of questions as to where exactly it came from.

Finally, I reached a decision._ I want power armor_. I typed. _By not a suit. I want to know how to build it, and I want the power core or whatever else can't be produced here. _That seemed clever. That way, if the plans came through useless or with some trap built into them, I could simply not build the armor and be no worse off than I was before.

Then, with what felt like a hammer blow to my face, the information on how exactly to build a suit of heavy tactical armor hit my head. It felt like something was prying open my skull and injecting the knowledge, in the form of molten steel, directly into my mind. I bent over under the assault, slowly falling to my knees as my legs wavered and failed with the pain flooding my mind. Some obscure part of me supposed it made sense, from a philosophical perspective. Take all the suffering and unpleasantness involved in earning several degrees in robotics, cybernetics, and engineering, condense that down to a few seconds of pure physical pain, and it is going to _hurt_.

Then, just as abruptly as the pain came, it vanished. It took me a moment to recover. As I climbed to my feet, something appeared out of thin air with slight _pop_ and clattered to the floor of the machine shop. It was a black box, about the size of an old computer tower processor. It was a glossy back on the top, with silvery sides covered in ports of all description. A small pamphlet of folded paper rested on top of the box.

I walked over to it, still slightly light-headed front the pain of the sudden infodump. I picked up the pamphlet and opened it.

_Hello_ it read._ Welcome to the mark one black box reactor. With an energy and power density on par with the best dust-fueled power plants on Remnant, this device is perfect for all of your portable energy needs._

I read quickly through the pamphlet. It was rather tongue-in-cheek, reading more like a product advertisement that a user's guide. Apparently, it used the 'induced decay of solid-state dust' to provide a considerable output of energy. The only drawback, it appeared, was that it needed to be supplied with a continuous stream of aura energy to maintain induced decay and containment. Without an operator with an unusually strong aura in close proximity, it would shut down.

As I read through the pamphlet, there was another soft _pop_, and a large box, indistinguishable from any one of dozens of others scattered throughout the room, appeared in front of me. It was several feet on a side and colored a dull black, with a silver keypad on the top. I walked over to the box and looked at the keypad; it appeared to be some form of locking mechanism. Hesitantly, I reached out and touched one of the keys.

The whole pad flashed blue for a moment, then with a slight _click_, the lid of the box split along a fine line running down the center, and the two halves popped open slightly. I opened the box.

It was filled with... things. Devices of all description, plates of metal, servomotor-looking things, braided strands of something, what looked like electrical control units, and more. As I sifted through the material, I came to a realization. These were the components for the power suit I had requested, probably those that would be difficult or illegal to acquire on Remnant. '

Mostly satisfied with my acquisition, I closed the box and tried to push it off to the side. It didn't move. I tried to pick up the box, but it wouldn't move. The damn thing had to weigh at least a hundred pounds, probably more.

Figuring that I had to leave the box where it was and hope the lock would protect it, I walked back over to the portable reactor and picked it up. It was heavy as hell, but manageable. I set it on its side next to the box of components, then wandered over to the office Professor Radiant had vanished into.

I knocked on the frame of the officer door, then, hearing no response, I grasped the knob and opened the door.

It was a mess. The office was about the size of a largish bathroom, with desks on along all three of the walls facing away from me. The desks were covered in a blizzard of papers, with computer scrolls scattered throughout the mess.

I saw a male beacon academy uniform resting on one of the few clear spaces on the desk. There was a small note on top of the uniform, which read: _Sorry, had to go address something. Try on the uniform, you can't go to class in your hospital gown. I have plenty, we have to deal with the occasional dust-related mishap down here._

"So" Professor Ozpin said, setting his ever-present mug of coffee down on his desk. "Just who is this child?"

"To be perfectly honest, sir, I'm just not sure." Glynda Goodwitch responded, reaching up to adjust her glasses. She fidgeted, then withdrew her extra-large computer scroll from under her arm.

"What do you mean?" Ozpin asked, swiveling his chair toward her. "Haven't we reviewed his application background information? His transcripts? How is it possible we don't know who one of our own students is?"

"I reviewed his history and everything checks out, but there is something _off_ about most of his records." Glynda opened her scroll and taped something. "Take this, for instance. The orphanage where he spent most of his life. Two days after his records say he left the place, it burned to the ground, and I haven't been able to get in contact with anyone who survived the fire. Their records were destroyed, too, so we haven't been able to confirm whether he was ever really there."

"So? Doesn't his transcript check out?" Ozpin said, seeming to miss the gravity of the situation. "Pinnacle Combat Academy. It's a perfectly respectable institution, is it not?"

"It was a perfectly respectable institution, sir." Glynda said, opening the relevant article on her scroll. "It closed. Mark was in the last graduating class, and, as per policy, they purged their records after closing."

Ozpin sighed. "What's the problem, them?"

"His paper trail just seems... I don't know, suspicious, I suppose."

"Well, do you doubt his combat ability?"

"His transcripts were... another area of interest." Glynda tapped her computer scroll, opening the admission records database.

"How so?" Ozpin asked, raising an eyebrow. Paper trails and such were one thing, but a student's combat skills were quite another.

"He is almost impressively... mediocre, sir. He placed in the exact center of the curve on every stat we collect on students, and his essays were practically form letters for the median score anchor examples, with _just_ enough nebulous personality to make me think they weren't copies of the forms."

"Now that's... certainly intriguing. He is an average student."

"No sir." Glynda said "His records are exceptionally medicine."

Ozpin raised an eyebrow. "But...?"

"The incident with the Void Phoenix seems to indicate otherwise." Glynda shook her head. "No one who scored a 7 out of 16 on the Fletcher Leadership Index would have taken charge of the situation like that."

"You seem to have this well in hand." Ozpin said, taking another sip of coffee. "And no doubt you have a proposal for a plan of action. What do you want to do?"


End file.
